Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

Jola is a founding member of the Big Goal, an initiative dedicated to addressing youth homelessness through the transformative power of football. The Street Soccer Foundation, a nationally acclaimed charity, are tackling youth homelessness with the support of clubs across the Premier League and English Football League (EFL) by equipping individuals with the skills they need for a brighter future.

The Big Goal, known for its holistic approach to youth development, aligns with Jola's commitment to fostering positive change and community well-being. By supporting the Big Goal, Jola aims to make a lasting impact on the lives of young people. This month Jola’s football team took part in a charity football tournament in Derby.  They played well, showing great teamwork and spirit but missed out on qualifying for the national finals.

Rob Stevens, Jola’s COO, commented “Football is a big part of my family life, providing a fantastic way to engage with young people in the local community. The Channel has a responsibility to help overcome challenges faced by our young people, and the Big Goal was set up for that purpose. We focus on imparting valuable skills, aiding in education, upskilling, inspiring, and ultimately changing lives for the better.”

Good company culture comes from the top. It’s a shared belief system that everyone works to, is recognised for and rewarded against. It is a shared ethos, absorbed and replicated by the team. Culture is consistent and managed like every other aspect of the business.

At Jola, we built the business from the ground up. The founders had all worked together previously with a shared ethos. We put our partners first. We do what we say we will do and hold each other accountable, to build trusted relationships. We set challenging goals and plan to exceed them. We respect our employees, partners and suppliers.

Issues can be easy to spot if you measure employee and partner satisfaction. Understanding the values and how they relate to the success of the business, is key.

Challenges to consistent corporate culture

Working from home has impacted the speed of culture adoption. In the office, you see how the team interacts and solves problems. New employees get the chance to adopt the same behaviours. Remote working has made managing culture more challenging. Clear communication, positive feedback and mentoring have helped our culture to grow with the business.

About Jola

Jola is an award-winning, channel-only supplier of business communications, specialising in mobile data SIMs. We are a global eSIM MVNO, providing innovative IoT and mobile data solutions to MSPs, ISPs, IT support companies and telecommunications resellers.

Adrian Sunderland, Jola’s CEO, led a team of seven in a 100-mile charity bike ride from Derby to Skegness on Saturday 17^th May 2025. He raised over £38,000 for the Derbyshire Children’s Holiday Centre and Derby Kids’ Camp. To find out more about the charities, please click here.

Adrian Sunderland commented, “As many of you know, this is no real hardship because I love riding my bike and it’s for a great cause. Derbyshire Children’s Holiday Centre and Derby Kids Camp provide some of the most disadvantaged and deserving children with opportunities and experiences they would otherwise be unable to access. To donate to this wonderful cause, click here: https://www.justgiving.com/page/team-jola-skegvegas25”

Harry Singh, a Partner Director at Jola, cycled over 350 miles from Edinburgh back home to Birmingham, over the weekend. With other members of his cycling club, Harry helped raise over £2500 for the Sikh Helpline – a local charity that provides a Samaritans-type service in the West Midlands.

Harry Commented “I am pleased to say that we all managed to cover the distance (367 miles in total) and raise over £2.5k for the charity, and the event itself raised substantially more.  In doing so, I also burnt through 30,920 calories, so if you see me stuffing my face during any Teams calls over the next few days that’ll be why!”

Awareness and support for mental health has improved over the last few years. Organisations like Jola are inclusive and diverse. They provide all employees with private medical care and support for physical and mental conditions. Employees need to feel supported and valued within a business and channel businesses benefit from strong relationships with an experienced and successful team.

At Jola, we provide a safe environment for the neurodiverse and check in with them regularly. As a business, we provide confidential counselling and encourage holidays and social interaction with our team, such as family fun days and team nights out. 

About Jola

Jola is an award-winning, channel-only supplier of business communications specialising in mobile data SIMs. We are a global eSIM MVNO, providing innovative IoT and mobile data solutions to MSPs, ISPs, IT support companies and telecommunications resellers.

Integrations are important as they help businesses to improve performance, reduce costs and enhance customer relationships. UC improves productivity with simple click-to-call users when they are available and helps teams collaborate. Common integrations are Microsoft with Cisco and common CRM software.

Partners successful in this area are looking at how their businesses interact with customers and how this can be enhanced using unified communications. Vendors can help by identifying key use cases highlighting unique solutions to common problems.

Selling the benefits

According to Metrigy Research, companies that utilise integrated UC and CC solutions from a single vendor reported a nearly 100 per cent revenue increase, a 14 per cent cost decrease, a 57 per cent customer ratings improvement, and a 37 per cent agent efficiency improvement. 

By reducing the time spent switching between different communication platforms, UC allows employees to focus more on their tasks. With real-time sharing capabilities, employees can seamlessly connect from any location and device with an internet connection. This flexibility enables remote work, and international collaborations, and fosters a work-from-anywhere culture.

Unique, cost-effective managed solutions are the key to success for channel partners trying to win new business. End-users buy from suppliers they trust, who are responsive to their needs. Being a one-stop-shop for all of their requirements is important as is working with an aggregator.

Future

At the moment, the UC collaboration experience is all based on two dimensions video and screen sharing.  However, we already see our SIMs being used in Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) applications in specialist industries with purpose-built tools and devices.  However, companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Google are investing heavily in AR and VR for both consumers and businesses.  This combined with the widespread availability of 5G makes me think it won’t be too far away before the UC and Collaboration tools that we use every day start to open up AR and VR for widespread B2B use.

Cultural standing  

We assess the strength of our cultural standing against our core values. These are not advertised on our company walls they are ingrained in our behaviour. We put our partners first. We track how quickly calls are answered, how fast tickets are resolved and how happy our partners are with our service. The best measure of our cultural standing is the longevity of our staff.

Cultural priorities

We are accountable. We do what we say we are going to do. This is important as our partners trust us to respond quickly so they can get back to their customers. This impacts day-to-day behaviours as we honour our commitments and if we can’t, we let people know before the deadline and renegotiate so we don’t let each other or our partners down.

Cultural focus 

Right now we are focussed on the growth plan for financial year 24/25. To achieve the high targets we have set for ourselves, we need to recruit additional resources in sales, marketing and support. We will be recruiting against our values to find innovative, ambitious individuals, who will help partners to find, win and roll out unique solutions.

Cultural competitive advantage

We offer a unique environment to learn new skills, develop careers, and build a successful company. We offer competitive packages and the opportunity to be first to market with innovative solutions. The work is rewarding and the rewards are incentivising.

Living by our values

Our culture is driven and demonstrated by the founders of our business. It’s how we behave and how our team behaves. We share our success in company meetings, reward success in our appraisals and reflect on how we can improve our success. Culture is something that is learnt. You can see it in action in a company. It’s how things are done and how you get things done. It does not require a big budget.

Adrian Sunderland, CEO of Jola, announces another senior appointment. Joseph Kirk is promoted to Chief Architect reporting directly to him.

Joseph will be responsible for software architecture, strategy, and development.  He has been with Jola for over 10 years holding several key positions, most recently as Software Development Manager.  He has driven innovation, improved systems and enhanced user experience.

Joseph commented, “I look forward to managing and developing our cloud infrastructure and software to meet partner requirements, now and in the future."

Adrian Sunderland, Jola’s CEO, commented “Both Robustel and ZoHo have recognised Joseph for driving innovation. I have worked with him for many years. I am confident in his ability to deliver unique solutions, which are easy to manage, save customers money and generate healthy recurring margins for our partners.” 

Adrian Sunderland, Jola’s CEO, took part in a 100-mile charity bike ride from Derby to Skegness on Saturday 18^th May 2024. He raised over £12,000 for the Derbyshire Children’s Holiday Centre and Derby Kids’ Camp. To find out more about the charities, please click here.

Adrian Sunderland commented, “As many of you know, this is no real hardship because I love riding my bike anyway and it’s for a great cause. Derbyshire Children’s Holiday Centre and Derby Kids Camp provide some of the most disadvantaged and deserving children with opportunities and experiences they would otherwise be unable to access.”

To donate to this wonderful cause, please visit: https://www.justgiving.com/page/sunders-sea-and-skeg

How are channel companies approaching their environmental, social and corporate governance strategies?

We try to reduce our carbon footprint by preferring greener suppliers, promoting recycling, offering cycle-to-work schemes and using Teams. Apart from helping the planet, it saves money, and we have partners that need us to have green credentials. Social governance is a priority at Jola, as we provide competitive packages and an engaging culture for employees to thrive. Channel companies regularly support local and national causes running for charity, playing in football and boxing matches, hosting coffee mornings and supporting local food banks. It is a great way to engage employees, give back to the local community and encourage physical and mental well-being. Corporate governance around equal pay and diversity has been under the spotlight for the last few years in the channel and we display our diversity awards with pride.

How important are ESG strategies to purchasing decisions? 

As you would expect unique solutions, reliability, security and pricing all factor into decision-making, however, the larger corporates are asking partners for ESG policies more and more.

What support is available from vendors in the channel?

Sharing best practices is a good place to start as well as making policies available via web pages and partner portals.